PERSONAL CRIMINOLOGY PORTFOLIO

This assignment will provide you with the opportunity to explore the area of criminology, criminal justice and crime, to consider why you have chosen this area of study, to explore societal perspectives about these areas, and to consider options for possible future employment in these and related fields. 

You will be collecting various documents, and answering some questions related to each document you include in this portfolio.  It is expected that at a MINIMUM you will have 10 entries in this portfolio, adding at least one entry per week for the majority of the weeks of this course. 

Each entry is to pertain to a crime or criminal or some aspect of the criminal justice system

You are to provide a diversity of entries, that is, you are not to have 10 entries of the same type, e.g. 10 newspaper articles.  The topics of the entries should also be diverse, i.e. not the same story in different audiovisual formats or different media stations.  For one entry you may wish to include different formats speaking about the same issue/story. 

The majority of your entries should be about real issues, not fiction stories, e.g. not more than 4 entries should be about episodes of fiction tv shows. 

Appropriate entries include the following:

-  crime articles or newsstories found either in print or audio/visual format

-  brochures of organization that work in criminology, criminal justice areas

-  undertaking interviews of persons who work (paid or volunteer) within the fields of criminology and criminal justice

-  personal observations of events witnessed, e.g. attending a court hearing, witnessing a crime

-  an episode of reality crime television show, or drama crime shows, or movies, documentaries

For each entry the following must be provided:

Date of when entry was accessed

If a print/internet piece, actual copies of the entry

Completed questions

Questions to address in your entry:

In your discussion of your entry, you are to provide a critical analysis of the entry.  Provide the following information pertaining to the entry: (some aspects of the following won’t be applicable):

-  Briefly summarize the entry, e.g. what is the issue/event being discussed.  In this include: who are the participants/parties in the issue, the key players involved, who is talking about the issue, a timeframe for the issue, location

-  Reflecting on what you know about crime and society from this course and your other classes, what are your thoughts about the content of the entry, what are the problems you find in the contents of the entry, e.g. what misinformation/bias/stereotypes exist, is the information useful, realistic.  Always provide reasons for your comments.

Revised: February 16, 2006 .